Stewart

About 3 weeks ago, our dog Stewart St. George, of potty training fame, all of the sudden looked like he was pregnant. And his backbone started to be really prominent. And our chunky, muscular dog turned in to skin and bones over a weekend. We took him to the vet who said his abdomen was full of fluid but he didn't know why. And he sent us to a vet two and a half hours away. That vet told us that poor Stew had an extraordinarily aggressive form of cancer that metastasizes almost instantly because it is located inside the heart. We were told he had, at most, two weeks. We wanted his end to come naturally if he wasn't in too much pain, but after a week of watching him try to breath through all of that fluid, we knew we weren't being kind to him.
We had to put Stew to sleep, which was hard for a lot of reasons. It was hard because we didn't know what to tell the kids. It was hard because we felt like we need to tell the kids the truth and give them a chance to say goodbye, but we didn't want them to feel like we had let someone hurt part of our family. It was hard because we love Stew. We had him long before we had kids. It was hard because his life was his own, and I felt like it was a little wrong to take it from him when he was struggling so hard to live it. 
I was really worried about how the kids would handle things. Hana is terrified of death and has experienced more of it than any small child should. Meron really loves her puppies. I will never forget the terror and pain on her face when Stewie ran past her out the front door and down the street (you know, because he had to say hello and I love you to everyone within a five mile radius). She screamed, "My Tewie! He's gonna get hurt! Help him mama!" I couldn't imagine what it would be like when we had to tell her that he was hurt and we couldn't help him.  And Kai, well, Kai's got lots of big feelings. And he isn't great at handling them.
We talked to the kids about our dilemma, that Stewie was very sick and that we couldn't help him to get better, even though we had tried. We said that he was hurting a lot and that he would start to hurt more and more but that there was a way the vet could help him to die without it hurting. Instead of the tears and pleas for an alternative that I was expecting, Hana and Meron immediately said that euthanasia was the right thing to do, because we didn't want Stewie to be hurting as he was dying. I couldn't believe how quickly that mature decision was made by our 5 and 6 year old after Nathan and I had agonized over it for a week.

The kids wrote him a letter to take with him after they said goodbye. They said they loved him and that they would miss him wiggling and kissing them and that he was a really good dog. We thanked him for loving us so much. And we all hugged him goodbye.
Not gonna lie... things are hard right now. The two losses we've had in such a small amount of time have Nathan and I reeling and scraping the bottom of the barrel to try to give the kids the extra that they need and sometimes there just isn't enough. All I keep thinking about is that the horrible conversation that we had to have with our vet about how our beloved Stew was sick and there was no way to help him? Some people have to have that conversation with their doctor. Or, much worse, their child's doctor. And then, my foggy vision clears a little, and things really don't look so bad. We are are all healthy and our needs are met. We love each other and we are a family. We are terribly lucky. But still pretty darn sad.